The Jordan comeback. INDIANAPOLIS SCENE.

It's A Bull Market For Tickets-until Game Time

INDIANAPOLIS — Driving down from Chicago Saturday night with his 11-year-old son beside him, James C. Caraher was working the car phone, trying to get a hotel room.

Like hundreds, maybe thousands, of other Chicagoans, they were on a pilgrimage.

They were going to witness what Sunday, at least, seemed to be some kind of historic moment.

An hour before Michael Jordan's first game as a postretiree, Caraher, a real estate investor, had no tickets. But he also had no worries.

At that moment, scalpers were selling tickets for about $150 apiece. An hour earlier, they wanted $500 for $65 tickets.

But Caraher believed the market would soon collapse.

"The air is going to come out of this thing," he said.

He waded into the throng outside Market Square Arena, which seemed aptly named Sunday, as the noisy marketplace grew on the sidewalk. It was a bazaar of scalpers on the hustle and sometimes-sheepish buyers wondering how much it would cost to get a seat on history.

The potential for profits had turned otherwise-upstanding Indianapolis citizens into street-corner scalpers.

"I've never done this before," said one man who identified himself as John. "If I get $1,000 for these four tickets, it will cover my mortgage and my car payment."

Then he revealed the dark underbelly of this market: He had bought the tickets for his family months before.

"My 11-year-old son is disappointed, but I'll buy him something nice," he said.

Some ticket buyers pounced on the market early.

The instant he heard the announcement, Dave Calzaretta of Northbrook was on the phone paging a ticket broker. The broker, apparently unaware of Jordan's return, sold him four tickets for $120.

"My parents remember where they were when Kennedy got shot, and I remember where I was when Jordan retired, and now I'll remember seeing him come back," said Calzaretta's friend, George Marta, 19, of Lincolnwood.

As if this sunny, storybook day could burn off any cloud cover of cynicism, it seemed to be providence, not cash, that let some people in the gates Sunday.

Tony Davison, 26, of Chesterton, Ind., had bought tickets to the game for his dad as a Father's Day present.

Dressed like mannequins at a Bulls souvenir shop, Chris Anderson, 15, and George Nunns, 14, both of Indianapolis, were waiting for the ticket market to bottom out. To them, getting in was everything.

"I don't know how to put it," said Anderson, a smile sliding off his braces. "It's monumental."

Between them, though, they had but $65. Too shy to wade into the bazaar, they had help from an intermediary-a big-hearted but perhaps slightly derelict Indianapolis police officer.

"A cop is trying to get us a good price," Nunns said as the two sat on a bench nearby.

Just minutes before the game started, the collapse came. Suddenly, everyone standing on the street corner was waving tickets as empty cups and scraps of newspaper blew around the sidewalk where the buyers had been.

Tickets could now be had for $40.

"I'm the only one out here buying," said Joe Demichele, 33, a trader of mortgage-backed securities in Indianapolis.

One scalper who had driven down from Chicago shook his head.

"A bad day," he said. "I lost $200. I bought some tickets for $125 and $150 and had to sell them for $75."

But the collapse didn't bring prices down to the two-for-$65 range that Anderson and Nunns needed. Dejected, Nunns called his father to come pick them up.

"I feel bad," Anderson said, his eyes covered by the bill of a Bulls hat. "I really wanted to get in."

Meanwhile, Caraher, who had driven down with his son the night before, rode the market down and pulled the trigger on two choice tickets for $110.

"The real objective here is to create some father-son memories," Caraher said.